ALBANY –– The eighth annual Albany FilmFest will be held in March and several events have already been announced. The surprise? The festival, which features shorts, for the first time will present full-length documentary features on some nights.

“It’s exciting,” Albany FilmFest Coordinator Naomi Sigal said. “We still, at our core, are an all-day shorts fest. It’s expansive to be during the week and we can have other events.”

The festival will begin March 17 at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave., with an all-day kids matinee, featuring shorts made by and for young people.

On March 20, the 2016 documentary “My Love Affair With The Brain” will screen at the Albany Twin Theater, 1115 Solano Ave. The film features Dr. Marian Diamond, who researched the plasticity of the brain.

The 2016 documentary “4 Wheel Bob” will screen at the Twin on March 21. The film centers around Bob Coomber, an East Bay hiker who happens to be in a wheelchair. He was the first wheelchair hiker to cross the Kearsarge Pass in the Sierra Nevada, which has an elevation of 11,845 feet.

On March 22, the 2017 documentary “Turn It Around: The Story Of East Bay Punk” will show at the Twin. The film covers 30 years of the East Bay’s punk scene, which produced bands including Green Day, Operation Ivy and Rancid. It also tells the story of 924 Gilman, the iconic punk venue in Berkeley.

The film is produced and directed by Corbett Redford, who gained fame as a member of Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children McNuggets. Iggy Pop narrates the film and Green Day gets executive producer credit. The band arranged screenings in tandem with its Revolution Radio world tour this year.

Redford and co-writer Anthony Marchitiello will appear at the screening.

“Reality Bites” is a program on March 23 at the Albany Community Center. It is billed as a behind the scenes tour of virtual reality film-making. Producer and Albany resident David Eisenmann will give a tour of Google’s “Spotlight Stories” shorts. Techniques and story-telling strategies will be discussed as well as the role of virtual reality in the future of film.

Eisenmann produced “Pearl,” which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Film (Animated) earlier this year.

Finally, on March 25, the traditional program of short films will be presented at the Twin. The schedule will be announced early next year. It will consist of six programs.

“We are really excited about adding those features because they are all really solid,” Sigal said. “They are all really interesting and fun documentaries.”

She added, “We’re really excited that in the last eight years our audiences have grown, our connection with the community has grown. We’re excited that they’re excited for us. Because that was the whole point. The initial impetus for the film festival was to have a place for the community to express their voice and for all the parts of the community to get together and communicate together.”

Tickets for all shows are $10. A festival pass is $50 until January 6, $70 thereafter. An all-day pass for the March 25 shorts program is $40 until January 6, $50 after.

Kids matinee tickets are $5 for adults, $1 for children with kids age 3 and under free.

Tickets are available at the Albany Twin box office or online at https://www.landmarktheatres.com/san-francisco-east-bay/albany-twin/film-festivals.

For more information on the Festival, go to http://www.albanyfilmfest.org.

"Never Look Away" begins as the evolution of a style. But in its sweep and finely tuned focus, it chronicles the emergence of a self - fully realized and finally capable of wresting meaning from a random, cruel and stubbornly unresolved history.